Blair Collection > Place names in Strathbogie, with notes historical, antiquarian and descriptive

Cainiie. 199
binding ' for ever,' a second became necessary
five years afterwards, in which practically a new
bargain was concluded about the church-lands ;
and in this second deed we have the slight
change Butharryn, and also the old spelling
Butharry. There seems no reason to doubt the
Gaelic is Both-aindh, ' the bothy of the. summer
pasture.' In a charter of 1529 (Spal. CI. Ant,
III. 116) Botarie appears as Potare, and in the
Retour of 1662 it is given Pittarie. Although
these are solitary instances of this change in the
first syllable of the name, they no doubt indicate
the gradual process by which many of our 'boths'
were changed into ' pits.'
The present tenant of Botarie informs me,
that about twenty years ago there were on one
of his fields two round spots on which all crops
grew much more luxuriantly than elsewhere.
Tradition said that two chiefs had been buried
there, and curiosity led him to dig into these
supposed graves, in hope of finding stone coffins
or other relics of interest. The examination of
the first of these spots yielded no results. On
digging into the second it soon became apparent
that the ground had been previously disturbed,
and he found that an excavation of considerable
width had been made through the rock to the
depth of 1 1 feet, and at the bottom was a quantity
of what he believed to be charred grain. He
therefore concluded that this place had been ex-